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I wanted to write a funny blog today, but I am still feeling pensive and I need to roll with it.

Below is a photo I took of my son half his life ago, when he was a little over three months. At first, I simply considered this a great photo opportunity and I was very self-satisfied with my abilities as a photographer. Today I looked at it again for the first time in a while, and I found a lesson waiting for me.

When was the last time you felt this joyful when looking in the mirror? How often have you looked at yourself, only to be critical of or disappointed in what you saw? I would venture a guess that virtually everyone would answer, “A while,” and “Too often,” to these questions. Yet I defy you to find a young child who looks in the mirror and does anything but smile at him or herself. Young children certainly don’t look in the mirror and judge themselves, that I am sure of.

Many spiritual teachers proclaim that there is no good or bad, there only is what there is. Over the course of our lives we develop and strengthen our identity or ego, but that is really just a collection of ideas and memories about our physical selves, to which we become attached. Our egos spend all day judging things as inherently good or inherently bad, instead of accepting them as they are. The judging we do clouds our view and prevents us from being truly happy and fulfilled. Our essence or spirit, on the other hand, is unencumbered by judgment or negative emotions; it isn’t attached to how we look or to things we have or haven’t accomplished. It is our pure potential, as Deepak Chopra puts it, and connecting with our pure potential is the key to happiness.

My first thought is, “Gee, that sounds like a nice place to be and I wish I knew how to get there…” But I am starting to believe that we all used to be there, and the challenge is just remembering how to get back.

I recently read that, until about the age of five, very young children have not fully transitioned into the physical realm and they are still very connected to the spiritual realm. In other words, young children are still in touch with their essence, and lack a sense of identity or attachment to the physical form they have taken in this lifetime. Is that why a child can look at him or herself in the mirror and feel pure joy? Child psychologists might say that developmentally, the child doesn’t yet associate the image with him or herself, it is something that needs to be learned. Maybe. But, what if that association is to be unlearned, or if the real learning is to remember that the physical form our soul inhabits is not who we actually are.

When I first became a mother, I believed that much of my role is to teach my child by introducing him to new experiences, but that is only part of this journey. The other part of the journey is for me to learn from my son as well, and the first lesson is that I must reconnect with my essence. I must let go of my attachment to my accomplishments, my failures, my successes and my disappointments. I have to try to remember how to look in the mirror and see past my Self, so I too can experience pure joy.

I wish that I could honestly say this photo was posed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. I guess the term “balance” takes on a whole new meaning when it is referring to balancing a computer and a child on your lap at one time while trying to make a phone call. Isn’t that what laps are for?

If Max’s first words are “profit margin” or “cash flow”, I will shoot myself!